Party crashers? Utah, BYU among 5 teams in West eyeing a BCS bid

Never mind How The West Was Won.

One of the emerging themes of the 2008 college football season is How The West Is Winning.

It's the rise of two unheralded, non-BCS conferences west of the Mississippi.

Check out this week's Associated Press Top 25. One-fifth of the teams included in those rankings hail from the Mountain West Conference (No. 11 BYU, No. 17 Utah and No. 24 TCU) and the Western Athletic Conference (No. 19 Boise State and No. 25 Fresno State).

By comparison, BCS conferences like the Pac-10 (USC) and Big East (South Florida) have just one ranked team each. The Atlantic Coast Conference has two (Wake Forest and Clemson).

Indeed, the college football landscape is changing as MWC and WAC teams vie for a Bowl Championship Series berth. Meanwhile, a couple of other non-BCS teams, East Carolina (No. 23) and Tulsa, have also made noise this season.

BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall said teams from non-BCS conferences are showing that they belong.

"I think in the competitive world, there can be complacency. Possibly, the Pac-10 and the BCS conferences, because of their budgets, because of their facilities, because of tradition or whatever other reasons there might be, they might think those things mean that they play better football," Mendenhall explained.

"What the trend is showing is, that's not the case. Schools from Conference USA, the Mountain West, the WAC, the Mid-American Conference on any given week are proving to be very competitive. I'm not saying all those conferences are equal, but what I'm saying is, the gap that's perceived to be so wide, really isn't."

When it comes to non-BCS conferences, the West has been best.

Ten years ago, the then-16-team WAC split up as Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV, Utah and Wyoming bolted to create the MWC. Instead of crumbling, the WAC added Boise State while other programs improved. The MWC, meanwhile, added TCU in 2005.

Utah became the first non-BCS team to qualify for a BCS game, in 2004, and the Utes crushed Pittsburgh in the Fiesta Bowl. The last two years, the WAC has had one of its members break into the BCS, as Boise State qualified for the Fiesta Bowl and knocked off Oklahoma in an epic overtime contest; then, last fall, it was Hawaii's turn, though Georgia smashed the Warriors in the Sugar Bowl.